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Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- HiroProtagonist 4mo agoSid Meier's Pirates on the iPad was a great experience. Bummer it isn't supported in modern iOS.
- Apreche 4mo agoAt first I was frustrated because I didn’t know what the controls were. The arrows were moving, but nothing seemed to shoot. Then I realized the space bar was shooting. You just can’t see the bullets because they are tiny black dots on a dark blue background.
- iweczek 4mo agoThank you for the feedback! I'm going to address both points tonight when I get back home.
- monkeywork 4mo agoWell done - that was a fun little distraction :)
- iweczek 4mo agoThanks!
- zuzululu 4mo agothis game is crazy fun
- iweczek 4mo agoThanks!
- ez8 4mo agoGood but too easy
- iweczek 4mo agothere is a difficulty level now
- dbingham 4mo agoThat was fun, but the AI and the balance need some work. It's too easy to win as the small boat. You just stay ahead of your opponent and then turn back and strafe periodically. It would be much more challenging if you added wind and realistic sailing dynamics. If wind direction vs sail orientation mattered to your speed and boat characteristics weren't as simple as smaller = faster then I think it would be much better balanced and way more fun/challenging!
- matthewfcarlson 4mo agoI just went into a circle and shot, won every time for every boat
- dbingham 4mo agoOn further play, really the only match up where I had any trouble was large vs large. (As a side request, it would be nice to be able to choose your opponent!) With both small and medium, you can just strafe back and forth in front of your opponent if you're faster than them. With medium and large, you can just circle them and absorb more punishment than them when you're larger than them. Multi-player would solve the AI problem -- especially if it was more than 1v1 -- and then it would be more challenging. But I would still request realistic wind and sailing dynamics. That strafing maneuver isn't really possible with real wind dynamics, because you slow down as you swing around and that allows the opponent to catch up to you and return fire. You could have a little arrow in a corner of the screen that shows the wind direction. You don't even have to make the sails movable, you could just have your speed be proportional to how orthongal your sails are to the wind direction in the simplest implementation. It would add a whole new element to it that would make it much more challenging! :)
- iweczek 4mo agoThanks for playing and the feedback. I plan on adding wind dynamics very soon. Letting you choose opponent instead of random should be easy. Multiplayer with more than 1 would be interesting, I like that idea!
- stackghost 4mo ago
- ms_menardi 4mo agomake it multiplayer, I dare ya >:) (if you need this kind of motivation)
- sudo-rsingh 4mo agoYup totally support that.
- k2xl 4mo agoFun but should have difficulty levels!
- iweczek 4mo agoLove the feedback, just wondering how to implement that. More difficult means your ship moves slower? you reload slower? your hits cause less damage? Need to think about that...
- Jeema101 4mo agoIllustrates the importance of 'crossing the T' in naval warfare before there were turreted guns. :)
- hermitcrab 4mo agoFun. Maybe you could add some random features for a bit more variety. Shallows, islands, fog banks etc.
- iweczek 4mo agoThanks for playing! That's an interesting idea, thanks.
- inasio 4mo agoNice job! Sid Meier's Pirates is one of my favorite games, wish they brought it back (I still play it occasionally, can't believe it never got a remake)
- kevinmchugh 4mo agoIt was remade in 2006
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4mo agoMaybe like me that is the only one they've played. I didn't know there was an earlier one for several years.
- alt227 4mo agoGreat game! Reminds me very much of Overboard for the PS1 back in 1997. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71accvNZ0aA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71accvNZ0aA
- sfRattan 4mo agoI remembered seeing this game as a kid, but the name sounded off... And Wikipedia reveals it was released in North America (NTSC format) as "Shipwreckers!"[1]. It also featured 5-player local multiplayer if you had multitap, according to the article, and I remember most other games of the era supporting at most 4 players locally. I'll have to find this one and give it a try! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overboard!_(1997_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overboard!_(1997_video_game)
- wolttam 4mo agoCute but I won first time on all 3 sizes
- iweczek 4mo agotry harder difficulty level
- fabiensanglard 4mo agoNothing is moving on the screen for me :/ ! I can't pick the ship. Console shows no error.
- toxicunderGroov 4mo agoSame here, using Firefox 151.0.4
- san_dimitri 4mo agodid you try arrow keys and space bar?
- iweczek 4mo agoon a mac, windows, or linux? I have tested it in both browsers only on the mac but I don't see any reason why it would not work on a different OS since it is only HTML5 canvas
- williadc 4mo agoI also experience this on Firefox 151.0.3 on Linux
- toxicunderGroov 4mo agoWindows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC 24H2
- JMiao 4mo agomy kid has 50+ hours in sid meier's pirates and told me they stare at the world map in their classroom and try to locate towns and ports in the caribbean when they're bored. i will show your game to them, though i am certain the first thing they will ask for is chain shot. not to discourage your good work, but here's another project worth checking out if sid meier's pirates is your thing. https://tinywind.io/ https://tinywind.io/
- iweczek 4mo agoNice, I still remember that map even though I haven't played the game in decades :) tinywind looks very cool, thanks for sharing.
- tinywind 4mo agoThanks for the shoutout! Always love to see people building cool things tinywind.io just added a new game mode and has a PvP and Steam release in the works :)
- madduci 4mo agoThis is really cool
- MayeulC 4mo agoI also like windward: https://store.steampowered.com/app/326410/Windward/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/326410/Windward/
- mgc8 4mo agoThis is pretty cool as a prototype, nice job! I'd say it needs some progression (one-on one to one-on-multiple, think 1xL against 2xS, etc.), as well as some more map variation (channels, islands, hazards like a giant whirlpool, kraken, the works). As a final shape, multiplayer would be pretty cool, but of course that's quite a bit more difficult... But I for one would be there for it :)
- iweczek 4mo agoi like the idea of a progression, and multiplayer is coming
- alexpotato 4mo agoThis 100% has the "vibe" of the original game but should include that if you sail "into the wind" it slows you down. Also, I've been trying to make a remix of SMP but with a princess theme for my daughters. Been experimenting with making other games to practice building out game mechanics and stumbled into making a game where you manage a Soviet Tractor Factory [0]. I'm interested to see if developing parts of Game A lead to Game B which in turn lead you back to interesting ideas for Game A (or maybe better Game C). 0 - https://alexpotato.com/games/tractor47/?l=hn https://alexpotato.com/games/tractor47/?l=hn
- alexpotato 4mo agoIf people have feedback on the game, would love to hear it on the below link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48503530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48503530
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4mo agoThat link doesn't work, so I'll respond here: My impression is that my ship always has a better turn rate than the other ship, so if I ever manage to get into the enemy ship's e.g. 4'oclock position, I can keep turning towards it, it will (slowly) turn towards me while consistently shooting behind me, and I can consistently hit it.
- LearnYouALisp 4mo agoWell, have you dogfooded it and how many times? I have hundreds of turns on it now, at least.
- alexpotato 4mo agoGetting the feedback in the other comments has taught me that some more dogfooding would have been rewarding. Thanks for the suggestions.
- IgorPartola 4mo agoI don’t see a way to succeed at this game. The issue is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to meet the first 5 year plan and it’s all downhill from there. But this really points to a deeper problem: in a game like this you have to pick one of two philosophies. Either the idea is to find the one algorithm that makes it work because the game is doing the same thing every time, or the game has an RNG that makes some games winnable and some not. The in between path is difficult to balance. You could for example dynamically adjust the difficulty such that if the player gets hit with a bad string of choices generated by the RNG then the difficulty is temporarily dialed down and when the player is having good luck the difficulty is raised. But I think for this kind of turn based idle game it is more about discovering the player algorithm that works and I see no algorithm that could work here. I do however absolutely love the vibe of the game. I think with a little more attention it could be absolutely amazing.
- esafak 4mo agoFor me the watercolor imagery and music were half the game (Pirates Gold). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOPdsiOp5R0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOPdsiOp5R0
- iweczek 4mo agothanks for sharing the video!
- contingencies 4mo agoLove the original. Some key tactics you need to pick up are: use a small ship, because if you are fast with the right technique nobody can hit you, and you can cross vast distances quickly without starving. Keep food stocked and limit large ship acquisition to a phase of the game in which you need large numbers of pirates for town invasions / large ship fights. Always sell extra cannons. Always buy the goodies from the bar. Upgrade ships religiously: you want all upgrades. In swordfighting, prefer rapier (speed with good reach) over larger weapons in most cases. Obtain new letters of marque. Obtain land after performing state-aligned duties by talking to the governors: this builds your long-term wealth. The easiest victim (given all other letters of marque) is the dominant state in the era (different eras have different mixes, but it's usually the Spanish). To catch the military payrolls, sink the escorts then damage to near 'strike their colors' before closing in for swordplay. Change to buck shot to reduce opponent count before swordplay without risking loss of vessel hull. Remake on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3920/Sid_Meiers_Pirates/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/3920/Sid_Meiers_Pirates/
- supertroop 4mo ago“the emperor wishes to see you posthaste!” This immediately reminded me of the 1980s Apple game Taipan and of course it is playable online: https://www.taipangame.com/ https://www.taipangame.com/
- itintheory 4mo agoHuh. I remember playing a very similar game on Apple II, but I believe it had a Dutch / European theme, and was called something like "Ooperhoofd". I can't find any reference to it online. Maybe it was a 'modded' version of this? That one, and Odell Lake[0] were the best disks in the library computer lab in middle school. [0] https://classicreload.com/apple2-odell-lake.html https://classicreload.com/apple2-odell-lake.html
- pinchydev 4mo agoLove it! I remember fondly playing pirates as a kid this is great! I recently built https://navalstrike.app https://navalstrike.app to scratch my naval warfare itch. Happy to share how I did lightweight p2p multiplayer with a super lightweight server handshake if you want :)
- RobRivera 4mo agoI am the greatest Pirate hunter in the world.
- lencastre 4mo agoI am not sure if my memory is mixing with 4D Boxing (!?) but I think if you took too long your pirate would be quite old and weak, or?
- iweczek 4mo agoomg, thanks for reminding me about 4d boxing! that was so much fun
- Daviey 4mo agoReally enjoyed this and it brought back many memories of the Amiga, great job. Two suggestions, - The sailing is a bit too nimble, it's possible to turn naturally. - It's currently possible to sail over/under the other ship. When will it be possible to intercept and have a sword fight? :)
- cbarrick 4mo agoPlease adjust the color contrast. I can hardly see the cannon balls.
- iweczek 4mo agothanks, will do!
- CrimsonCape 4mo agoIt would seem relatively easy to tie speed to the direction the boat is facing. The more perpendicular you are to the 'wind direction' the faster you move. Or make the fastest velocity 45 degrees from wind direction, for a bit more realism. Basic sailing physics can add to the fun.
- iweczek 4mo agoThanks for the feedback, adding wind dynamics is on top of my list :)
- franze 4mo agoI started a thread if others want to show their AI coded games. -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48509243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48509243 maybe it becomes a monthly thing, maybe not.
- ceuk 4mo agoWhat's the key to fire? I've tried everything
- diabllicseagull 4mo agoSpace key
- itintheory 4mo agoFor some reason this made me think of Pirates Constructible Strategy Game [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_Constructible_Strategy_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_Constructible_Strategy...
- theropost 4mo agoI remember playing Pirates on my 8086 in the 1980, mono-chrome screen, and I was amazed a a kid. Sid Meier's games were always a step above, and so immersive feeling for their day. I started a project from that too (one of many I suppose). I also was inspired by the KOEI games on SNES - Uncharted Waters. It needs polish, content and more work but the kids like it. https://ship-voyage-4zn.pages.dev/ https://ship-voyage-4zn.pages.dev/
- JMiao 4mo agonice, thanks for sharing
- AnotherGoodName 4mo agoThis is exactly like a much older Apple 2 game called Old Ironsides fwiw. On the Apple 2 it was 2 player only but a lot of fun back in the day. With an added ability to ram ships (pointy front into flat side one if you landed it before they sunk you).
- atleastoptimal 4mo agoI feel like difficulty progression would help.
- iweczek 4mo agothat is in now, check it out
- aidanbeck 4mo agoOne fun unintended mechanic: Because sailing off screen loops you around Pacman style, and because a browser window is dynamically resizable, you can use this to your advantage teleporting behind the enemy and taking them by surprise. Love this!
- taubek 4mo agoI first played Pirates on C64. There was a paper version of the map that was a lot of help when you played and tried to find some locations.
- pgt 4mo agoHow to shoot? I can't figure it out. Perhaps made harder by typing on Colemak. Edit: OK, spacebar shoots, but it's hard to see the cannons flying due to low contrast. And it shoots in the direction of the enemy.
- wizardforhire 4mo agoIs there an unskipable minigame thats crucial to winning that majorly objectifies women and is beyond obnoxious with terrible animations and sound effects? Because if not, I’d love to check this out… but never again in my life will I subject myself to that mini-game!
- flohofwoe 4mo agoUnfortunaly only a demo of the ship combat system of Pirates :) The actually interesting part for me was the historical setting, exploring the Carribean geography, watching the world evolve, all the while trying to keep the ship crew under control :) Also we still need a proper 2D remake (the 3D-ified game console version from 2004 didn't really age all that well and has too many QTE gimmicks).
- sgt 4mo agoI'm actually building a boat game for my 5yo son. We're building it together. I decided on using Love2d as the framework and I'm basically distributing a DMG to family and friends to run it and test it.
- cen0b 4mo agoSuper fun! I'd add the ability to restart the same battle once its finished, kinda tedious to go back through and select the settings I want. A product of my laziness heh
- simonebrunozzi 4mo agoLovely! Thankfully no one (AFAIK) has done a similar work with Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon Deluxe... Otherwise I would be easily spending tens of hours playing it. One of the games I have loved the most in my life!
- zhoBEENG 4mo agoReally enjoyed this, thanks for sharing!
- NKosmatos 4mo agoNot playable on iPad, will try it on PC.
- iweczek 4mo agoshould work now on mobile and ipad, are you not seeing the controls on the bottom?
- dmzxnico 4mo agoIt's cute! Push it deeper
- fsckboy 4mo agofun yesterday, but today there's 3 screens of answering the same questions with ever replay? at least put all the questions on the same screen, this "modern" way is ridiculous
- iweczek 4mo agojust fixed that, it is all on one screen now
- neuralkoi 4mo agoI played the demo that came with Windows in the late 2000s when I was a teenager and became so addicted to it. Because I couldn't afford at the time to buy the full game, I stopped when the demo features ran out. This post brought me back and I can see it's available on Steam. [0] [0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/3920/Sid_Meiers_Pirates/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/3920/Sid_Meiers_Pirates/
- iweczek 4mo agook, working on multiplayer, how many people/ships should be allowed at one time?
- zeusdclxvi 4mo ago1v1 to start off
- iweczek 4mo agoAdded a few enhancements over the weekend: 1. Wind dynamics 2. Opponent selection or random 3. Support for mobile and touch devices 4. Difficulty level selection 5. Sounds for firing cannon and ship getting hit 6. Survival mode for seeing how many ship you can sink with increasing difficulty Multiplayer coming soon...